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Green crabs taking bite out of business in P.E.I.

Green crabs, aggressive oyster predators, are able to survive outside of water for extensive periods of time and are considered a cockroach of the sea.

By Denis CalnanSpecial to The Star

Fri., Sept. 21, 2012

The water in Bedeque Bay was choppy as Frank Hansen and his assistant pushed off shore, near Summerside, P.E.I. He’s the point man in a project to limit green crab in the bay, something even he admits may be futile.

Green crabs are aggressive invasive crustaceans that eat shellfish, are able to survive outside of water for extensive periods of time and are considered a cockroach of the sea by some. They are spreading like wildfire here on P.E.I. and for the first time this year they have been found in Malpeque Bay, the furthest West on the north shore of P.E.I. they have ever been found.

Hansen pulls up trap after trap, connected by rope, covered in seaweed. He works with the P.E.I. Shellfish Association and this is the first time anyone on P.E.I. is attempting to control the species. The project is taking place near Summerside because of the rich shellfish industry here. Green crabs are experts at getting into shellfish — each crab can eat up to 30 juvenile oysters per day. Hansen is tasked with trying to protect Summerside shellfishers livelihood from the green crab.

“It’s going to be real difficult,” Hansen says. “Whether we’re making an impact on the amount of green crab is rather questionable.”

His catch today is surprisingly high he says, as he hauls up one of his fifty traps. He has collected about 35,000 since the beginning of May.

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Those numbers are astounding for the province. “This year it kind of exploded,” says Kim Gill, a shellfish biologist with the government of P.E.I.. “He’s had much higher numbers than we predicted.”

She notes researchers set traps last year to see how many were there, and the numbers were much lower.

Gill says the warmer water than is usual this year may be linked to the higher numbers of green crab.

“They’re beyond aggressive,” says Gerald Wadden. He’s been shellfishing for about 28 years and sees the impact of the crab first hand.

He points to West River, near Charlottetown, where he says oyster fishing used to be a booming industry, but not anymore. “Something’s killed the oysters off and in that area the green crabs are solid — like they’re there wicked.” Where he used to bring in over a 100 boxes of oysters from West River, now he might bring in 30.

Wadden says he’s seen a lot of shellfish predators, but never anything like the green crab.

Researchers at the University of Prince Edward Island are hoping they can help the shellfishers. Mary McNiven is working with other researchers to find an economically viable way of getting the proteins and fats from the crabs into fish food, and perhaps food for humans as well.

“Right now there really isn’t a market for them,” says McNiven, noting the abundance of higher quality crustaceans in the Maritimes, like snow and rock crabs, as well as lobsters. “These are the lowest and that’s why we’re probably not looking at going to a restaurant and having a mess of them.”

The challenge is that there is little meat compared to how much shell there is. “Their surface area is quite large in relation to the protein on the inside,” says McNiven.

She and the other researchers are trying to find out the best time of year to fish them and the best parts of the body to process — then they hope to have an experimental fishery.

McNiven says humans are helping the species spread in some ways, because of the lack of a fishery. “We’re fishing all our natural species and yet we’re not fishing the green crab so of course it’s doing very well,” noting it is naturally a very adaptable animal.

But, “DFO doesn’t propose fisheries out of the blue — you have to give evidence like mad,” says McNiven. The evidence is what they are working on now.

McNiven and her colleague, Sophie St-Hilaire, reach into two freezers in their lab at University of Prince Edward Island. Here they keep a sampling of the massive amounts of green crabs they have collected from different parts of P.E.I., at different times. They bring out frost-covered crabs, they sit in the freezers next to a bag full of liquefied green crabmeat, a small baggie of meat in powder form and another bag of shredded shell. St-Hilaire will soon be in the kitchen, whipping up a green crab recipe.

Until their work bears fruit Wadden is hopping Hansen and the P.E.I. Shellfish Association can make a difference.

“We’re all hoping,” says Wadden. “If I had my way they’d all be rototilled into the garden.

“There’s a place for everything in the ocean,” he says, “but there’s only a place for so many of them.”

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